Longtime professor Lucio
Ruotolo, expert on Virginia Woolf, dies

BY JOHN SANFORD

Lucio Ruotolo, a professor emeritus of English whose work on
Virginia Woolf helped to cement her reputation as one of the great
writers of the 20th century, died July 4 at Stanford Hospital. He
was 76.

The
cause was complications following heart surgery, family members
said.

Born March 14, 1927, in New York City, Ruotolo was the son of
a Viennese-born mother and an Italian-born father, a sculptor known
for his busts of luminaries such as Arturo Toscanini, Thomas
Edison, Theodore Dreiser and Helen Keller. (Four works by Onorio
Ruotolo have been donated to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts by
Lucio Ruotolo and his wife of 43 years, Marcia Mauney
Ruotolo.)

Ruotolo was an only child and grew up among his parents'
Bohemian entourage. His kindergarten teacher was Jackson Pollock,
and one of the family's closest friends was the painter Thomas Hart
Benton.

He
was drafted in 1945 into the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he was
trained as a high-speed radio operator. He left the service two
years later and enrolled at Colgate University, where he earned a
bachelor's degree in English, and then Columbia University, where
he earned master's and doctoral degrees in English. In 1957, he was
hired as an acting instructor in English at Stanford and roughly
two years later was made an assistant professor.

Ruotolo was founding editor of Virginia Woolf
Miscellany, a newsletter launched in 1973 that is still
published, and author of The Interrupted Moment: A View of
Virginia Woolf's Novels (Stanford University Press, 1986), in
which he asserts that Woolf's characters who "allow the chaotic
intrusion of events or people to reshape expectations emerge as her
most creative heroines."

Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is a subject of his award-winning
first book, Six Existential Heroes: The Politics of Faith
(Harvard University Press, 1973), in which he explores
existentialism as a positive, life-embracing philosophy that can
serve as a catalyst for change.

"The book grew out of the notion of a hero who develops in
relation to a world he seeks to remedy," Ruotolo said in a 1983
interview with the News Service. "My object was to redefine the
notion of an existential hero in more political terms. ... A
recurring criticism of existentialism is its supposed disposition
to pessimism, anarchy and disillusion -- that it remains
essentially a destructive posture. I assume that the courage to
raise the question 'If not something, why not nothing?' is linked
to the capacity to suspend, at least provisionally, traditional
solutions and to entertain often radically new
procedures."

Ruotolo himself was active in promoting political change. He
protested against the Vietnam War, worked for Eugene McCarthy's
1968 presidential campaign and served as co-president of the
Stanford-Palo Alto Democratic Club.

Outside scholarship and politics, baseball was one of his most
abiding passions. He was a Giants fan and frequent season-ticket
holder. "We were elated when they won. We were depressed when they
lost," said his colleague and fellow Giants aficionado Ronald
Rebholz, a professor emeritus of English. "He was one of the most
fantastic fans I've ever known."

In
the arena of sports fandom, another longtime friend, Bliss
Carnochan, the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities,
Emeritus, sometimes found himself at odds with Ruotolo for
supporting the Dodgers. "Finally, Lucio and I decided not to
discuss such matters," Carnochan explained.

Carnochan, who attended ice hockey games with Ruotolo,
described him as a "vociferous fan" whose enthusiasm was
contagious. "He was a remarkably generous person," Carnochan
said.

In
addition to his wife, Ruotolo is survived by three children:
Cristina Ruotolo of El Cerrito, Vanessa Ruotolo of San Francisco
and Peter Ruotolo of Dublin, Ireland.

In
lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the First Presbyterian
Church Endowment Fund for Social Justice -- 1140 Cowper St., Palo
Alto, CA 94301 -- or to another charity. A memorial service is
planned for 3 p.m. Sept. 20 at the church.